Colorado O Scale St. Vrain River Bridge Project

Rendering by drawing is awesome! once finished, it will be nice!

jpv in France

Looks pretty good...

I love it! Bridges are one of the best parts of model railroading.

Thanks guys!

I am also attempting to make the sections double as a display module also. 

Some early prilimiary sketches showing some thing about the engineering. I worked closely with a retired civil engineer who helped me create a scene that would be accurate but also visually interesting. Patterned after several St Vrain crossings I think we have a solution that will be visually stimulating as well as functionally authentic.  Era is 1950's... 

The drawing my assistant came up with showing the shift in angle to help avoid the geometric appearance of running the structure in line with the edge of the layout. Dual guage is also being considered similar to this bridge south of Alamosa and in Alamosa.

(C) photo copyrights used for reference only. 

Wow! That is well planned. Looking forward to seeing the real thing.

I definitely like where this is going Erik.

Erik,

Congratulations. Excellent example of using numerous freehand sketches to visualize bridge scene prior to actual construction. Shift angle in rail right-of-way adds a lot of visual interest to the overall scene. Wish more people would adopt your sketch technique before attempting to build their layout scenes. 

Bridge design and details very convincing!

Thank you fellas. I really appreciate the feedback. I believe this will be a fun project and real corner stone to the LTN. 

PS: I changed the title to be suitable for some viewers and participants of the forum. 

The bridge is a seriously beautiful piece. 

OMG!  It's a model!

The seats gave it away, Erik.

Outstanding! 

Very nice Erik.  Here, east of the big muddy, we often see remnants of older bridges aside of newer and larger ones.  Many times all that remains of the older bridge is the stone bridge piers in the body of water (if it's not navigable). 

Interesting sidelight, when Newark Bay was dredged thirty years or so ago to make it more accessible for larger vessels, they did underwater demolition to get rid of the footings/ middle piers from the old Jersey Central draw bridge (which was actually twin lift bridge spans).

Kewl stuff and a sweet bridge, that OMI piece.  Wished I could justify one.

It's a heavy model; and detailed. I've never poured over one of these before. Areas you can't see all done perfect. Kind of a holy grail piece for brass aficionados.

More conceptual drawing: not to scale but worth the effort to work out the scene. 

Too bad Train Cat won't make a shorter (25'-40') version of their very common AmBridge plate girder bridges in O scale.  Yes, I did ask several years ago but was warned not to get pushy or the owner will just ignore you.

Those would be AWESOME for yours and for many projects.   The capture the feel of the real built-up nature of these perfectly.

Train cat for sure has amazing kits. I do wish he would consider O Scale. 

Thanks for sharing, again!

Bridges add excitement to model RRs for me. They are as important as any other piece of equipment on the layout, at least.

This bridge, is amazing.

Looks like we have some options 

COSM groupie Leighton has come up with a plan using some structures some COSM members have built in the past. 

Another plan for expansion includes some industry  excuse the roughness of these two. Very preliminary designs  

Dual gauge trackage. A true Colorado railroad 

Engineer-Joe posted:

Thanks for sharing, again!

Bridges add excitement to model RRs for me. They are as important as any other piece of equipment on the layout, at least.

This bridge, is amazing.

Joe it is an incredible model.

Meeting of the minds and some coffee 

Original concept drawing for reference 

Progress update 11/16

Preliminary contour study

Mock up with 75" radius S turn 

Acquired brass through plate girder 15.75"  

This will be a fabulous project. 

you're not kidding!

Lookin great!

I love the idea of the 3 styles of bridges together.

I love the combination of vision, modelling skill, and art that Eric shares on the  forum.  His and the posts of other active modelers make checking out the 2 rail forum an enjoyable part of my day.

He also encourages us to be more creative with our own layout photos. 

I couldn't wait; I set up a test shot of the two bridges together. Cool huh!

Thank you gentleman

Some interesting images 

As a bridge troll, I can tell you just when you think you've seen it all with respect to bridges, you come across something you thought you'd never see. There was an old Pacific Electric steel truss bridge in San Bernardino across the Santa Ana River that started out as a wooden trestle. On the south side of the bridge, the trestle pilings were all in place leading up to the concrete footings for the steel bridge. Best guess is that the bridge got washed out in one of the floods that hit that river (one in 1938 took out the trestle on the ATSF Redlands Loop). Somewhere I have photos I took a couple of years before they took down the bridge to make an access road (a less attractive concrete highway bridge). I've even seen bridges built from decommissioned 89-foot flat cars. Go figure.

Cool it is, Erik. 

those are some serious model bridges Erik.

I like that bottom string truss in your photos.

Bridges are a marvelous example of function leading form.......and producing something of rugged beauty and symmetry.

Off we go with the build of the sections for installation. With some raw materials together I produced a final conceptual drawing of the project.  Used as a dual purpose, diorama, portable layout, and home layout installation in the future. 

I have built a couple of plastrut bridges adding rivet detail but nothing close to this bridge. Again, WOW! 

Erik, it looks like John is deep in thought thinking this scene would look so much better with about 4 or 5 Lionel girder bridges in a row.  So to help you guys out I would be willing to send you a 1/2 dozen of those and since you won't be using the 2 bridges pictured I think I might find a home for them. Seriously that scene really is looking super. Don't forget Scale City Designs has bridge shoes avail if you need them for the girder bridge if you don't want to take me up on the more than fair trade I offered.

I do need some bridge feet where do I send the money ?

Glad you are finding some enjoyment in this project.